OHIO SITE FIGHT: LEGAL VICTORY IN LIBERTY

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Judge: Township wrong in Wal-Mart fight [Columbus Dispatch (Ohio)]

A federal judge has ruled in favor of landowners enmeshed in a legal battle with Liberty Township over a proposed Wal-Mart store in southern Delaware County.

The 34-acre parcel that the Wedgewood Limited Partnership owns at Sawmill Parkway and North Hampton Drive was proposed as the site of a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Liberty Township officials in 2004 denied a zoning permit when they determined that the 220,598-square-foot building exceeded a cap on square footage the township had set for the Wedgewood Commerce Center district.

But Judge Algenon L. Marbley, in a decision issued Friday in U.S. District Court in Columbus, ruled that the township’s reasoning in denying the permit was unconstitutionally vague and that subsequent actions violated the partnership’s constitutional right to due process.

Marbley did not grant the partnership’s request to order the township to issue a zoning permit, but he threw out “the township’s cap as it was applied to the Wedgewood district.”

Attorney Bruce Ingram, who represents Columbus developer Charles J. Ruma and other members of the partnership, said yesterday that he did not know if plans for the Wal-Mart will be resurrected. But Ingram said his clients will seek “attorneys fees and ‘very substantial’ damages.”

Earlier this year, Wal-Mart ended a contract it had held since 2002 with the partnership that granted the company an option to buy the land once a zoning permit was obtained.

Curt Sybert, chairman of the township board of trustees, said he will not comment on the case until the board has consulted with its attorneys.

Posted by Luke West on Wednesday, October 01, 2008